Cast downward

Essay written for Jereny Todd's exhibition at Xeno Gallery, 2004

“For the world itself has tak­en on a ​‘pho­to­graph­ic face;’ it can be pho­tographed because it strives to be absorbed into the spa­tial con­tin­u­um which yields to snap­shots.… That the world devours them is a sign of the fear of death. What the pho­tographs by their sheer accu­mu­la­tion attempt to ban­ish is the rec­ol­lec­tion of death, which is part and par­cel of every mem­o­ry image. In the illus­trat­ed mag­a­zines, the world has become a pho­tograph­able present, and the pho­tographed present has been entire­ly eter­nal­ized. Seem­ing­ly ripped from the clutch of death, in real­i­ty it has suc­cumbed to it.” 1

There is no ground­break­ing evi­dence laid bare in Jere­my Todd’s series of pho­tographs Miss­ing Links: An Archive After His­to­ry . Rather, by the very frag­men­tary and lacu­nary nature of the imagery and fac­tu­al detail, the work points more to the impos­si­bil­i­ty of ever being able to fit the pieces togeth­er, and even of the impos­si­bil­i­ty of any orig­i­nary, pri­mor­dial event. Or per­haps time has erad­i­cat­ed cru­cial evi­dence. Fos­sils of bones, tools, wood, and stones lay scat­tered about, ready to be clas­si­fied and exam­ined for links, for signs of evo­lu­tion and progress. What seems to mat­ter here is to grasp how ideas around like­ness and dif­fer­ence have been con­struct­ed and how they have pro­pelled human civ­i­liza­tion along the par­tic­u­lar track it hap­pens to find itself on now.

Each por­trait image rep­re­sents an anony­mous or, more rarely, a rec­og­niz­able face, eyes cast down­ward, the head at three-quar­ter posi­tion, slight­ly tilt­ed down. Each occu­pies the cen­tre of a larg­er doc­u­ment that serves as a ground or frame for the portrait–a sup­ple­men­tary mean­ing. The edges of the head­shots are torn. Why have these images been ripped out so crude­ly? They recall a keep­sake. Their ​“ruined” aspect speaks of a ​“low” prove­nance and sig­nals an idio­syn­crat­ic archive, col­lect­ed piece­meal, dis­tract­ed­ly. Why were these par­tic­u­lar images saved/collected? What binds them in spite of their dis­tance from one anoth­er in time and space? And from which sources were they torn?

In many respects recall­ing the tac­tics and his­toric­i­ty of Aby Warburg’s Atlas , of ear­ly-20 th cen­tu­ry col­lage, and of post­war pop­u­lar cul­ture and fine art, Todd’s images jux­ta­pose ​“con­struct­ed mean­ings” with­in a ser­i­al for­mal con­struc­tion. 2Like War­burg he jux­ta­pos­es one image against anoth­er, with­out con­tex­tu­al ground­ing, and in the process pro­duces a secret cor­re­spon­dence. Todd’s archive links dif­fer­ent time peri­ods (thus hav­ing the appear­ance of an alle­gor­i­cal archive, one where mean­ing and clas­si­fi­ca­tion are ren­dered ambigu­ous) and attempts to con­struct mean­ing through the leap of inter­pre­ta­tion made pos­si­ble by the meet­ing of two unre­lat­ed images on the same pic­ture plane. While Todd’s aes­thet­ic might seem ​“anti-sub­jec­tive” in terms of its use of quo­ta­tion or the ready­made image, the series of works reveal an unmis­tak­able melan­choly that seems to point to a delib­er­ate pro­jec­tion of pathos on the part of the artist.

A crit­i­cal atti­tude toward the uses of sci­ence and the pho­to­graph­ic medi­um in fash­ion­ing how we rep­re­sent and con­cep­tu­al­ize our exis­tence is, at bot­tom, cen­tral to Todd’s col­lec­tion. The instal­la­tion and dis­play or the images also reflect a pro­found under­stand­ing of the very nature of pho­tog­ra­phy: the repro­duc­tion of an unlim­it­ed num­ber of images; its impor­tance in the dis­sem­i­na­tion of infor­ma­tion, doc­u­men­ta­tion, and imagery; its porta­bil­i­ty and mass dis­tri­b­u­tion. His archive fore­grounds an obses­sion with a cer­tain topol­o­gy, a com­pul­sive return to a spe­cif­ic, almost emblem­at­ic pose, and a cer­tain anachro­nis­tic aes­thet­ic speaks of appro­pri­a­tions of the recent past. A series of repeat­ed facial ​“emblems” func­tion as a pic­to­r­i­al lan­guage based on the over­looked, exclud­ed, neglect­ed, and/or dis­card­ed image. Jux­ta­pos­ing a recur­ring behav­iour­al fas­ci­na­tion with human con­tem­pla­tion, grief, melan­choly, and oppres­sion, to ref­er­ences of con­ser­v­a­tive, sci­en­tif­ic mod­els of knowl­edge that have come to mould our exis­tence (the pre­dom­i­nance of lin­ear branch­es and trees of sci­en­tif­ic doc­u­ments), Todd has devised a mate­r­i­al and for­mal dis­con­ti­nu­ity and frag­men­ta­tion that pro­vokes a sense estrange­ment or melan­choly in the view­er.

But what are these peo­ple look­ing at? They appear to have dis­cov­ered some­thing. And, in pass­ing, so have we. What are we look­ing at? What is it about this expe­ri­ence of look­ing at some­one look­ing? In many respects it places us in the posi­tion of the voyeur, invad­ing the inti­mate expe­ri­ence of an ​“oth­er”. And if we con­sid­er it a giv­en that these por­traits of peo­ple dis­play ​“symp­toms” that can be inter­pret­ed, what could these symp­toms be point­ing to? Per­haps the images act as a kind of collective/historical screen mem­o­ry.

In the mid- 18 th cen­tu­ry Johann Cas­par Lavater wrote Pys­iog­nomis­che Frag­mente , a text claim­ing, ​“the body, and espe­cial­ly the face and head, bore the out­ward signs of inner char­ac­ter. Lavater … sug­gest­ed that this ​‘orig­i­nal lan­guage of Nature, writ­ten on the face of Man’ could be deci­phered by a rig­or­ous phys­iog­nom­ic sci­ence”. 3In the late 19 th cen­tu­ry, the hys­teric was said to dis­play many phas­es of hys­ter­i­cal behav­iour, marked by dis­tinct facial expres­sions and fits of pas­sion, anger, etc. Using illus­tra­tions and pho­tographs tak­en of the patients at La Salpetriere, Char­cot ana­lyzed, cat­a­logued, and inter­pret­ed the emo­tion­al symp­toms dis­played by hys­ter­ics . Char­cot assert­ed that the result­ing archive of symp­toms reflect­ed the illness’s uni­ver­sal­i­ty, regard­less of nation­al­i­ty, race, his­tor­i­cal moment.

Allan Seku­la, in ​“The Traf­fic In Pho­tographs” and ​“The Body and the Archive”, out­lines the use of pho­to-doc­u­men­ta­tion for the archiv­ing, inter­pre­ta­tion, and future reg­u­la­tion and of the human body, seen as an assem­blage of frag­ment­ed organ­ic symp­toms (of crim­i­nal­i­ty, etc.). The ​“soci­ol­o­gis­tic” pho­tog­ra­ph­er of the Ger­man peo­ple, August Sander, advanced phys­iog­nom­ic the­o­ries, and believed that ​“a lib­er­al, enlight­ened, and even social­ly-crit­i­cal ped­a­gogy might be achieved by the prop­er use of pho­to­graph­ic means.” 4With­in Sander’s prac­tice, rep­re­sen­ta­tions of class were taint­ed by phys­iog­nom­ic the­o­ries that ratio­nal­ized ide­o­log­i­cal prej­u­dices.

We cre­ate elab­o­rate sys­tems for stor­ing, dis­trib­ut­ing, and sell­ing infor­ma­tion, expe­ri­ences, and emo­tions. But what pos­sessed us to con­quer space, to orga­nize knowl­edge through mem­o­ry traces (e.g. writ­ing, pho­tog­ra­phy)? And for that mat­ter, what was the decid­ing fac­tor that pro­pelled us from the hor­i­zon­tal, all-fours, posi­tion, to that of homo erec­tus, in turn lead­ing to the dom­i­nance of the visu­al field with­in our psy­chic imag­i­nary? Was it the evo­lu­tion guid­ed by the brain, the hand, or the pelvis?

Humans have acquired the capac­i­ty to inter­pret and rein­ter­pret them­selves beyond belief. But in con­quer­ing belief (in God), we were forced to con­front our earth­bound, mun­dane, cor­po­re­al exis­tence. This new­found sense of pur­pose­less­ness with­in the world, this pro­found absence that then lay at the cen­tre of human­i­ty, per­haps stands as the found­ing moment of the alle­gor­i­cal gaze. In turn this has moti­vat­ed our per­cep­tu­al pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with dead things. Under the gaze of melan­choly life flows out of the object and remains behind, a dead object, a dis­em­bod­ied shell. 5As a fixed, sta­t­ic image or sign, the alle­gor­i­cal emblem acts as a stor­age site for mem­o­ry. This shares the same sta­tus of the com­mod­i­ty, which, when emp­tied of its ref­er­ent, or rather, when the link between sig­ni­fi­er and sig­ni­fied is for­ev­er sev­ered, resem­bles the emp­ty ves­sel onto which a mul­ti­tude of desires, and trau­mas, are pro­ject­ed.

“The mir­ror stage is a dra­ma whose inter­nal thrust is pre­cip­i­tat­ed from insuf­fi­cien­cy to anticipation–and which man­u­fac­tures for the sub­ject, caught up in the lure of spa­tial iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, the suc­ces­sion of phan­tasies that extends from a frag­ment­ed body-image to a form of its total­i­ty that I shall call orthopaedic–and , last­ly, to the assump­tion of the armour of an alien­at­ing iden­ti­ty, which will mark with its rigid struc­ture the subject’s entire men­tal devel­op­ment. Thus, to break out of the cir­cle of the Innen­welt into the Umwelt gen­er­ates the inex­haustible quad­ra­ture of the ego’s ver­i­fi­ca­tion.” 6

The process of uni­fy­ing iden­ti­ty with­in the body is solid­i­fied at the mir­ror stage of infan­cy through its exter­nal­iza­tion in space. Attach­ment to the self occurs though mir­ror reflec­tion. In the realm of cul­ture, pho­tographs have also act­ed as a sur­face for self-recog­ni­tion through the release of phan­tas­mic pro­jec­tions trig­gered by the images them­selves. Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with the ​“oth­er” or with rep­re­sen­ta­tions of an ​“oth­er” occurs as if one were before a mir­ror. Attach­ment to the photographic/digital repro­duc­tion or to televisual/cinematic spec­ta­cle, is inten­si­fied through the voyeuris­tic plea­sure pro­vid­ed by the unin­ter­rupt­ed gaze. Thanks to the increase in influ­ence of the cul­ture indus­try, we inter­nal­ize a mul­ti­plic­i­ty of behav­iour­al traits every day. Unbe­knownst to us, a com­pli­cat­ed, and ide­o­log­i­cal, sys­tem of signs are involved in the con­struc­tion of the ego, too often result­ing in an unend­ing quest for ful­fill­ment and sat­is­fac­tion. One symp­tom has been the obses­sive con­sump­tion of images in order to main­tain one’s sense of self-worth and belong­ing to the human species, in large part aggra­vat­ed by the cul­ture indus­try. Todd’s archive works in oppo­si­tion to these ten­den­cies, in that the frag­men­tary nature of the work serves to dis­rupt any iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with or clear inter­pre­ta­tion of the image. Fur­ther­more, traces of the hand­made or con­struct­ed give a more sub­jec­tive ground­ing to the archive, coun­ter­ing the spec­tac­u­lar effects of the mar­ket forces.

“Eman­ci­pat­ed human­i­ty is not an adult human­i­ty; it is a human­i­ty that is allowed to antic­i­pate its adult­hood, in spite of the fact that it has not reached it, but as if it has reached it. Today, we know that human­i­ty will nev­er reach adulthood–understood as the entire­ly ratio­nal and autonomous state of the enlight­ened sub­ject. This we know not as a con­se­quence of our his­tor­i­cal dis­il­lu­sion­ment but as a con­se­quence of the bio­log­i­cal fact dis­tin­guish­ing humans from oth­er ani­mals: humans are born pre­ma­ture­ly.… Neote­ny, the fact–long rec­og­nized by embryologists–that the human brain is not com­plet­ed, and not com­plete­ly ​“wired,” at the time of birth is what has giv­en the cor­tex and the neo­cor­tex their phy­lo­ge­net­ic preva­lence over old­er (both in embry­olog­i­cal and evo­lu­tion­ary terms) cere­bral struc­tures and has allowed the for­mi­da­ble devel­op­ment of the human intel­lec­tu­al capac­i­ties. It is this fact that makes the growth of young humans vul­ner­a­ble and depen­dent on stim­uli from the out­er world, on the pres­ence of lan­guage in their envi­ron­ment, on parental care and affec­tion, on social rela­tion in gen­er­al, and thus on cul­ture, in a way that is not true for any oth­er species, not even the pri­mates. It is also this fact that accounts for the human species hav­ing devel­oped this intri­cate set of mechanisms–repression, cen­sor­ship, resis­tance, denial, dis­avow­al, sub­li­ma­tion, but also the return of the repressed, symp­toms, dreams, slips of the tongue, com­pro­mise-for­ma­tions, in one word, the whole neu­rot­ic (some­times psy­chot­ic) machin­ery reg­u­lat­ing the ​“psy­chopathol­o­gy of every­day life”–with which humans nego­ti­ate the dis­crep­an­cies between the ratio­nal capac­i­ties of their brain and the instinc­tu­al rem­nants of ear­li­er stages of nat­ur­al evo­lu­tion which their phys­i­ol­o­gy also con­tains… . It is the hand­i­cap of being born pre­ma­ture­ly that forces us humans to an eth­i­cal behav­ior instead of an instinc­tu­al one, and that should dri­ve them toward progress in civ­i­liza­tion, demo­c­ra­t­ic free­dom, a legal state and an inter­na­tion­al polit­i­cal order; and that there­by they would accom­plish their ​“nature”…it will always be too soon to grant auton­o­my to human beings, and this is why human­i­ty can­not be freed but only eman­ci­pat­ed. It is bound to antic­i­pate and adult stage that its very nature precludes–“bound”, in both the sense of a nat­ur­al deter­mi­na­tion and of a moral oblig­a­tion.” 7

The link between ethics and aes­thet­ics is of cen­tral impor­tance to Todd’s work. Hav­ing gone beyond the cult val­ue and the auton­o­my of the art object, and then hav­ing passed through a num­ber of attempts at a crit­i­cal func­tion of art (which assumes an eman­ci­pa­to­ry project 8), is there a future for an eth­i­cal prax­is of art in terms of long-last­ing ​“results” or even a sus­tained prac­tice (not one that end­less­ly has to rein­vent itself)? Why do these attempts at con­struct­ing a just soci­ety and mean­ing­ful exis­tence always fall short of the mark? Does the answer lie in the realms of the inac­ces­si­ble, onto­log­i­cal Real, or is it more a mat­ter of biol­o­gy? Is it the pre­ma­tu­ri­ty of our birth as a species as not­ed by de Duve, that keeps us obses­sive­ly moti­vat­ed to repeat the same endeav­ours and demon­strate the same behav­iours time and again? Is there hope beyond the pre­vail­ing defeatist atti­tude of our present moment? In pre­sent­ing this archive, Jere­my Todd seems to be offer­ing up a series of ambigu­ous inter­pre­ta­tions con­cern­ing the his­to­ry of human civ­i­liza­tion, our com­pul­sion to make art, and what sat­is­fies our needs through look­ing at art. There is no solu­tion in inter­pre­ta­tion, but there a few clues may mate­ri­al­ize.